The Charlottesville Riot, just an ugly incident or something bigger?

This statue of Robert E. Lee, completed in 1924, in Charlottesville Virginia. The city council had plans to remove the statue which led to several white nationalist groups and their hangers on to invade the city on Friday, August 19th to protest the statues impending removal. The next afternoon at around 1:42 PM, James Fields Jr. drove his Dodge Challenger through a crowd of counter-protesters killing Heather Heyer. Mr. Fields reportedly idolized Adolph Hitler and has been described by his teachers as having deep radical beliefs about race. He was apparently also a member of Vanguard America, one of the hate groups that organized the white supremacist rally.

What motivates people like James Field Jr? The social/cultural environment that he comes from is the only answer. Psychologists have clearly established that human beings are not naturally violent or hateful, so these emotions are acquired. This infers that Fields learned to be the violent person he is from others i.e. his “way of life”. What is this “way of life”? It is a way of life that does not admit to the racism within it.

We hear the phrase “connecting the dots” frequently, astrology is uniquely qualified to accomplish this task. I will be tracing the history of slavery/racism in America using several horoscopes of key events, such as: The Compromise of 1850; the attack on FortSumter; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Sibly Declaration of Independence chart and the Charlottesville Riot chart. There are many other key charts that could be included, among these I will mention: the Missouri Compromise, the Nat Turner rebellion, the Harper’s Ferry Raid by John Brown, and the passage of the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery in America.

I hope to show using astrology that the events in Charlottesville on August were part of the larger picture that began hundreds of years ago, perhaps as far back as 1619 when the Dutch brought 20 Africans ashore at Jamestown, Virginia. ( I will not cite this chart. It would be interesting to have it, but I don’t at this time)

Charlottesville Riot Chart ( timed for Heather Myers murder)

I will not go into a detailed interpretation of the charts used in this essay. It would be exceedingly tedious, and unnecessary for what I want to do which is to identify key points and show how these connect with similar features in each of the charts used in this study. Key chart features such as strong planetary patterns and the placements of the outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Particular attention will be given to Neptune as I believe that it is the primary planetary archetype related to slavery and racism. I will elaborate on this later in the essay.

What do we see in the Charlottesville Riot chart?

The grand trine of sun, Mars, Saturn and moon, Uranus certainly stands out. It accentuates the Fire element and is indicative of extremely, shall we say, energized, potentially violent conditions. Then, layered on the grand trine is a T Cross of Jupiter with Pluto which ties in with the grand trine through the moon, Uranus. The epochal Uranus square Pluto is activated by the conjunction of the moon with Uranus. The moon’s influence while ephemeral does nevertheless serve to bring emphasis to whatever it touches, here, the square aspect is intensified by a ‘translation of light’ by the moon. With Jupiter at one leg of the T Cross whatever is happening tends to be expanded, blown-up or otherwise fed more fuel, making the situation, conditions bigger than these should be.

A brief note of the sad death of Heather Heyer that day. One indicator of something like this occurring is the positioning of Pluto on the cusp of the 3rd House ( related to automobiles) square to the moon, with Uranus in the 6th ( illness,injury)

The opening square of Uranus and Pluto began at the conjunction in ( 15 -17 degrees) Virgo during the mid -1960s when the Civil rights Act was signed into law. This particular cycle of Uranus and Pluto is closely thus closely related to the civil rights movement. The square, although waning now, is indicative of a critical moment in the manifestation of what was ‘seeded’ at the conjunction in the 1960s, namely the attainment of genuine civil rights for all people, regardless of who or where they are in America.

The astrological picture of the events in Charlottesville, as I see it, does reveal ‘we the people’ critical juncture our collective struggle to ‘create a more perfect union’, and ‘promote the general welfare’, of all.

Let’s look at some of the charts of significant events in our racial relations history.

The Founding Fathers of our country when they debated and finally agreed on the Constitution did not, could not, resolve the issue of what to do about slavery. The Declaration of Independent’s high sounding words: “that all men are created equal..” were thus rather hollow, and a fundamental contradiction, a dark worm of deceit, entered into the body politic, the soul of the nation.

The Missouri Compromise, a missed opportunity to deal with slavery problem

The Missouri Territory petitioned Congress in 1818 for admission to the Union as a state. The next year an amendment to Missouri’s admission was proposed to ban slavery in the new state. This ignited a political convulsion. The Southern States were adamant that Missouri be a slave state while the free states wanted to ban slavery there. A Congressional crisis ensued over which way the balance of political power would move. The issue of slavery unresolved by the founders had come back to haunt the republic. The day was saved by the “great pacificator”, Henry Clay when he successfully negotiated a compromise on March 3, 1820, that would admit Maine as a free state and let Missouri enter as a slave state. This compromise preserved the balance of power as before, but was not real solution to the problem; it just postponed the inevitable showdown for another generation.

The approaching conjunction of Uranus and Neptune at 1 Capricorn, in 1820 while it did not herald the breakup of the union it did mark a critical event in the nation’s inexorable drift toward a civil war over the issue of slavery. If an astrologer had been present ( and had known about Neptune which had not yet been discovered) he or she would have advised government leaders that the “times were changing”, that it would be impossible to keep things as they were, that “the spirit of the times” demanded strong action be taken, that change be embraced, but that did not happen.

Sean Wilentz in his book The Rise of American Democracy, “The issues debated and the charges leveled, from 1819 to 1821 were, however, far more than passing interest. Once resurgent southern slavery had been attacked and defended as directly as it had been during the Missouri crisis, it would prove impossible to restore completely any fiction of sectional amicability, either in Washington or around the nation…Clay’s brokered bargain brought national political peace, but the Missouri crisis hardened northern and southern positions on slavery…”

The Nat Turner rebellion

Nat Turner was a slave in rural Southampton County Virginia. He was a sometime Baptist minister and apparently a mystic as he was inspired to instigate the insurrection by his mystical visions. The insurrection in military terms was of no importance as it was over in about 48 hours and there were not more than 60 slaves involved in the enterprise.

On August 21, 1821, at about 2:00 AM Turner and six other slaves entered the home of his master and killed the entire family, then they went from house to house killing whites, fifty-five were killed. Turner and his group mounted on horseback then road toward the town of Jerusalem but were intercepted by a band of white militia who confronted the killers and scattered them. Turner escaped and was on the run until the end of October when he was captured.

The insurrection spread panic throughout the South as many feared that more violence would break out. White mobs attacked and lynched many blacks. Southern newspapers printed stories accusing Northerners of being behind the disturbance. Tensions in Southern and Northern relations increased. The insurrection did help to puncture the Southern myth that their slaves were really quite content with their lot, or perhaps just to servile to initiate an armed revolt.

The Defeat of Mexico in 1848 has unintended consequences

The defeat of Mexico in its war with the United States resulted in the acquisition by the United States, in what was called the Mexican Cession, territory that would subsequently become the states of California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado, in bringing these territories into the Union America had now completed its conquest of the continent and could truly claim that it ranged from “sea to shining sea”. That was the positive side of the coin. The other side was much darker because this territorial expansion would re-ignite the North-South struggle over the issue of slavery and its effect on the “balance of power” between the free and slave states. This issue that had been more or less quite since the Missouri Compromise in 1819-20, except for the debate that flared with the annexation of Texas. Now it had returned with a vengeance.

The Compromise of 1850

The 31st Congress convened on December 3, 1849 and on January 29, 1850 Henry Clay, Senator from Kentucky, gave a speech calling for a compromise on the many divisive issues facing the Union. A fear was emerging that if the Congress passed strong legislation curbing the extension of slavery, the Southern states might withdraw from the Union. These kinds of threats were not uncommonly heard coming out of the South. Consequently, for any legislation to succeed it would have to have at least a modicum of agreeability for the Southerners.

The Compromise of 1850 was proposed by Clay as a series of five measures designed to please everyone, at least a little, and resolve the crisis. California was to be admitted as a free state; Texas received financial compensation for giving up its claims for lands west of the Rio Grande; the territory of New Mexico that included the present-day Arizona and Utah was organized without any specific prohibition of slavery; the slave trade was abolished in Washington D.C.; and the Fugitive Slave Law, very much desired by the Southerners, was to be enacted.

Debate raged and dragged on for weeks and then months without agreement. On April 17, 1850, there was an agreement in committee on the Texas border question. Later in the same day President Fillmore and Senator Benton got into a verbal duel, igniting a heated exchange among several other the members on the floor. Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi got so angry he drew his pistol on Senator Benton, but, he thankfully his reason returned and he didn’t fire the weapon.

In early June, nine slaveholding states sent delegates to a convention convened in Nashville, Tennessee, to discuss what common course of action these states would take should the compromise be approved. Several state delegations urged secession, there was debate, but eventually the moderates emerged as the majority committed to continue to work toward getting a satisfactory compromise.

July 4, 1850, came and went without passage on the compromise bills. Then, the situation suddenly changed on July 9, when President Taylor died unexpectedly, and Millard Fillmore was elevated to the Presidency. Fillmore was more in favor of the compromise than was Taylor. Senator Stephen Douglas, at this point wisely broke the compromise, which had been in the form of an omnibus bill, into five separate bills that were each presented separately. These are all passed by Congress between September 9 and September 20, 1850.

The passage of the compromise was hailed by many people, both North and South, as the final solution of the question of slavery in the territories. It proved not to be. The relative calm was broken in 1854 when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was introduced in Congress and seven years later the artillery of the Southern Confederacy forces would open fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The Compromise was in hindsight at best merely a delaying of what seemed to be the inevitability of conflict.

The Fugitive Slave Act, passed as one part of the 1850 Compromise, was the only component of the Compromise package that continued to inflame sectional tension after 1850. The Act, as passed, was a revised and strengthened version of one enacted in 1793; it gave slaveholders almost free rein to chase down and capture slaves anywhere in the country, and further, required that ordinary citizens could be forced to join in the pursuit of slaves. Harboring run-away slaves, was of course, a serious felony. This law was deeply resented in the North, and not just among avowed abolitionists. Historians cite this as one of the most significant sources of North and South tension in movement towards civil war.

The 1850 Compromise Chart

The conjunction of Saturn, Pluto and Uranus in Aries symbolizes the extreme nature of the national crisis during this time. In particular the curious partile conjunction of Uranus and Pluto in the last degree is striking and is indicative of the “last gasp” state of things, a time to stop talking and take action.

The Sabian Symbol for the last degree of Aries is: A duck pond and it brood, a symbol of the eternal fitness of things, provided the individual (or group) takes full advantage of the cosmic ordering. Implicit in the symbolism is man’s ability to establish his world of experience according to his own needs and the needs of others. A keyword is reliability, positively indicates a competency and ease in dealing with immediate circumstances, however, when negative, a tendency toward provincialism or acceptance of life with an altogether uncritical complacency.

Unfortunately, tragically, there was a total failure of will by the government leadership as the two the negative option, the path to destruction.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is Published

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, first published as a series of forty installments, the fist issue appearing June 5, 1851, was high on the list of contributing factors leading to the civil war. It appeared in book form March 20, 1852. It was eventually translated into all the major languages and was second only to the Bible in number of copies printed.

Repeal of the Missouri Compromise

The final blow to that undid the sectional truce over the slavery issue was the proposal of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. It repealed the Missouri Compromise, in effect since 1830, which had been regarded as a permanent settlement of the slavery question in the territories acquired in the Louisiana Purchase.

Stephen Douglas presented the bill in Congress. It proposed to repeal the Missouri Compromise by creating a territorial government in Nebraska and allowing the people of the territory to decide whether they would admit slavery or not and repealed the provision of the Missouri compromise that prohibited in the Louisiana Purchase territories north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes.

For four months the bill was hotly debated in Congress, but was finally passed on May 30, 1854. The passage of Kansas-Nebraska Act was seem by most as a clear victory for the Southerners and the supporters of the expansion of slavery.

In 1856, armed conflict erupted in Kansas. Douglas had written in a provision for “popular sovereignty” into the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Consequently, when as the time approached for the vote to be taken on the issue of free or slave in Kansas, a civil war broke out there, the territory became known as “bleeding Kansas”.

The Republican Party was born as a result of this political strife. They fielded their first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, in the election of 1856. With the emergence of the Republican Party which had a strong anti-slavery stand, the drift toward disunion was accelerated. The Party was a purely sectional one, having no support in the South and very little in the border slave states.

The Civil War

The election of Abraham Lincoln was the final act in the nation’s long struggle to hold together what proved to be two irreconcilable ways of life, the Southern slave economy and the Northern free economy. South Carolina was the first state to leave the Union, passing an ordinance of secession on December 20, 1860. Six other states, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas, had left the Union by February,1861. Delegates from the succeeding states met in Montgomery, Alabama, and formed the Confederate States of America on February 4, 1861.

The Confederates Fire on Fort Sumter

Most federal property in the South had been seized. By Inauguration day, March 4, 1861, except for two forts, Fort Pickens in Pensacola Florida, and Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor. Lincoln in his inaugural address did not issue an ultimatum to return to the fold to the Confederacy, rather, he was conciliatory, saying that whether there would be war was in the hands of the South. However, the problem of the continued possession of the forts by federal forces agitated the Southern leadership and they pressed their demands for a withdrawal. Some of Lincoln’s advisors were encouraging him to do so, but most of the Republicans were strongly opposed to any withdrawal. The federal troops at Fort Sumter were running out of supplies, soon a decision would have to made to either evacuate the fort or attempt to re-supply it. Lincoln, after much debate, decided to hold the fort and on March 20, sent supplies and reinforcements to Fort Sumter.

On April 9, President Jefferson Davis instructed Confederate General Beauregard to send demands to Major Anderson, commander of federal forces at Fort Sumter to surrender forthwith. Major Anderson rejected the ultimatum. On April 12, 1861 at 4:30 AM, General Beauregard ordered his artillery to open fires on the fort. Federal artillery returned fire. The battle raged on until the Union forces ran out of ammunitions on the afternoon of April 13 and they were forced to surrender.

Confederate attack on Fort Sumter Chart

Neptune entered Pisces in early 1848 and began its 13 year trek through the sign characterized best by the keyword sympathy. This 13 year period was a kind of open window of opportunity for the American people to come to terms with the problem of slavery and racism. The opportunity was squandered, the result was the civil war. In this chart we see that Neptune is within 1 minute of arc of exiting Pisces and entering Aries, quite a starting symbolical representation of events, I think.

More than a century later, a civil rights law is enacted, the Civil Rights Act of 1964

The bill was called for by President John F. Kennedy in his civil rights speech of June 11, 1963, in which he asked for legislation “giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments”, as well as “greater protection for the right to vote”. Kennedy delivered this speech following the immediate aftermath of the Birmingham campaign and the growing number of demonstrations and protests throughout the southern United States. Kennedy was moved to action following the elevated racial tensions and wave of black riots in the spring 1963.

Emulating the Civil Rights Act of 1875, Kennedy’s civil rights bill included provisions to ban discrimination in public accommodations, and to enable the U.S. Attorney General to join in lawsuits against state governments which operated segregated school systems, among other provisions. However, it did not include a number of provisions deemed essential by civil rights leaders including protection against police brutality, ending discrimination in private employment, or granting the Justice Department power to initiate desegregation or job discrimination lawsuits.

On July 2, 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signed at the White House the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has the epochal conjunction of Uranus and Pluto in a 5 degree orb, opposing Saturn with Mars as the focal planet in a T Cross pattern. This power of this configuration symbolically testifies to the momentous nature of the occasion.

Now we have some dots, how do they connect?

The symbolism of Neptune, Pisces and Virgo have been a basic source of inspiration in writing this essay. In the following paragraphs I will expand on my understanding of these and how I applied them.

Neptune in Sabian astrology as developed by Marc Edmund Jones has contributed a dimensional expansion to that typically presented in conventional modern astrology. What do I mean by this? Conventionally Neptune in its negative expression is associated with such things as: illusions, delusions, confusion, psychism, impracticality, deception and all sorts of addictions be they chemical or psychological in nature; and in a more positive forms as: , spirituality, compassion, creativity, and idealism. These attributes presence, but what is the psychological basis for them? Marc Edmund Jones took his exploration of the planet to a deeper level.

In Professional Astrology XXII, Jones writes: “There are two purposes served in every life – one of these the purpose of the soul in seeking and accepting incarnation, and the other the purpose of life as a whole in accepting and sustaining the individual existence – and of the these Neptuneindicates the intent of the life toward the person: the elements in experience through which the self is forced to conform to the outer scheme of things. This is a service to the extra-individual or cosmic elements of being. The whole purpose of being from the standpoint of society at large is indicated by Neptune. Neptune indicates where and how the individual fits into the general scheme of all things; it is the group classification of self. It is therefore, from some points of view, the most important planet in the chart.”

He continues; ”Uranus and Neptune represent an extra-human extension of faculty and therefore indicate an extra-human extension of experience… a convenient beginning of an understanding of their nature is to say that Uranus represents the individual’s approach to outer society, his means of direct mastery of life, and Neptune the approach of society to the individual, or the certain and sure mastery of society over him.

“Societies control of the individual is the pattern of his being, his reason for incarnation…Neptune does not tell us directly a single thing about any native, but it reveals as completely the entire reason and justification for the being of the native: why he is here, why he is here and now and why he is where he is, here and now.”

From this we see that Neptune acts as a refining force/influence on an individual, it seems to make demands. These ‘cosmic demands’ however may not be clear and concise, but appear to the individual ‘as seen through a glass darkly’; hence, the elements of illusion and confusion may enter, causing a person to question what is real and what is not. It is therefore not the real nature of Neptune to confuse, but in our inability tounderstand.

Sabian astrology therefore assigns the keyword obligation to Neptune. It identifies the place in the horoscope where the individual may experience the greatest social/economic pressure to conform that the values, mores and rules of that society. The individual who learns how to cooperate with social demands while also getting his or her personal wants and needs satisfied is likely to be perceived by others as a happy, well adjusted person, while the person who has not found his place in the scheme of things will feel and be a misfit; one who resorts fantasy, illusion of addiction to various substances to relieve their pain.

Neptune, the archetype of the oppressed, the enslaved, the dispossessed

That sentence concisely sums up my point of view in my essay. Neptune of course has countless symbolical facets which could be considered. The Africans brought to this continent as slaves are symbolically represented in the horoscope by Neptune, I believe. The sign polarity of Pisces and Virgo also plays a role in this. Neptune is considered to be the ruler of Pisces and does have some definite associations with that sign.

Neptune is in Pisces now. It entered Pisces in February, 2015 and will not exit the sign until March of 2025, a period of about 13 years. Neptune is a ‘generational planet’. It is closely related to ‘what’s in fashion’, the ‘spirit of the times’ and the general mood of a particular era and generation. When Neptune is in Pisces, the Past meets the Future, often violently. This condition is reflected in the zodiac as it is the last sign of the twelve, which suggests Pisces is the culmination, the summation of all the experiences that have accumulated during the preceding eleven signs. One could say that “all the chickens come home to roost in Pisces”.

As you can imagine this presents us when Pisces is prominent with some great difficulty in sorting out what is relevant, from what isn’t; what do we need from what should be discarded; what is true from what is false? Oh boy! I am loving that last one. With DJT’s grand entrance onto the World Stage he has resurrected the phrase ‘Fake news’ to widespread currency. The belief that there is nothing in mass media to be trusted ( I suppose with the exception of Fox News, The Drudge Report. Rush, and Breitbart ).

It is not only the daily news’s ‘truthiness’ that may come into question, but also any long held belief, religious or otherwise may suffer scrutiny. Old myths may fade into history and new ones may appear.

What old myths are being exposed to the Light of Day now?

One immediately pops into my mind – “Racism is not a real problem in America today”. The reality of racism is in the mind of the beholder, of course. In the minds of most ‘white people’, there is little racism, what there is exits simply because those who feel that way refuse to “let go of the past”.

Dr. Ben Carson, Gentle Ben, is now the head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was in Dallas recently and was reported to have said that there is really no housing crisis for the poor, it is an attitude problem. If people would change their way of thinking, he said, then they would solve their problem. Hummm. This is Dr. Carson’s prescription, and he does have credibility because he was a Brain Surgeon.

Another myth is the “Lost Cause of Southern Way of Life”. Oh no “we can’t take down that statue of Robert E Lee, that would be a desecration of his memory”! The Truth of the Matter is that that statue of Lee and most of the other Confederate commemorative statues were erected long after the Civil war ended, that is between 1910 -1920, coincidental with the passage of “Jim Crow” laws around the country, which were designed to intimidate black people from demanding and getting their just rights. The intent of the statues was therefore less to commemorate the memory but more to be a symbol of white supremacy.

Neptune was in Virgo in 1776 when the nation asserted its independence. A short way to explain the nature of Virgo is to say that it is opposite of everything we can say about Pisces. Virgo is much easier to understand than is Pisces, of course, so I won’t belabor elucidating what I think it means. I will comment of what its implications are in the USA chart in the following paragraphs.

The 12 Signs of the Zodiac are essentially 6 pairs of polarities. Hence, Pisces and Virgo are a polarity. This means that what is conscious, objective, in one sign is experiences the characteristic of the opposite sign unconsciously, that is as its shadow.

A key feature of the USA Declaration of Independence Chart

There are, and have been many different versions of the USA chart. For many years it was the Gemini ascendant chart that was widely used , in recent years the so-called Sibly Chart with a !2 Sagittarius 20 Ascendant has risen in popularity. This is the chart used here. I have done considerable research on a July 2, 1776, @ 11:11 AM chart. It features a 1 Libra ascendant. This chart was inspired by John Adams diaries, but I will leave that discussions for another day.

It is essentially immaterial what time of day one uses for the Declaration ofIndependence chart, the placements of the planets do not change much. I have always been interested in Neptune in the USA chart, perhaps because Neptune in my chart is in an exact conjunction with it, 22 Virgo 25. Further Mars makes a 2 degree square to Neptune in the USA chart. This is the closest square in the chart, and according to the Sabian Scheme this a primary key to interpreting the chart. Jones writes in “The Counseling Manual in Astrology: “indicates the single greatest challenge to the native in everyday affairs”. Additionally Jones says the astrologer should note which of the two planets must move forward to complete the aspect, it is the initiation/stimulating actor, while the other is carries out and expresses the action.

So, what does the close Mars, applying to Neptune mean for America, according to the astrology? In order to think about this question we need to get a firm understanding of what the two planets symbolize/represent. Mars’s nature is unambiguous, after all aren’t men from Mars, and women from Venus? Neptune is the very slippery one, it could be characterized as the archetype of ambiguity.

Neptune afflictions lead to military disasters

America since WWII has been engaged in almost continuous military misadventures around the globe. Beginning with the so-called ‘police action’ in Korean declared by President Truman. This was a war that probably should not have happened if some skillful diplomatic negotiations had of taken place after the WWII. So, there was a war on the Korean Peninsula, thousands of men died, but with no results, except a stalemate – no resolution, only a tenuous truce that stopped the conflict. But, now a nucleararmed North Korea threatens to blow us and others off the map. Other wars in other times have been just as futile – the Vietnam War, Afghanistan, Iraq and many smaller military actions among them.

Martin Luther King Jr. during last days on earth before he was assassinated began to speak out against the Vietnam War. He wisely and correctly spoke about the connection between racism/poverty and war. It is the poor and people of color who file most of the uniforms and fight in the foreign wars.

Neptune in the 10th House is a representation the Executive Branch’s exploitation of race and economic to further its objectives. The Sabian Symbol for Neptune at the 23rd degree of Virgo is: an animal trainer. The image of a person using a whip to control an animal, the lion or tiger comes to mind, so there’s nothing vague, obscure or hard to understand in it.

In an individual’s horoscope the accentuation of this symbol would been indicative of a need for strong self-discipline to tame vital energies. To get into a cage with a lion or tiger takes a lot of courage, and to survive there one must be very alert to the slightest signals, moves from the animal, and be able to read these and possess the necessary self control to adroitly use the chair, or whip or baton to effectively put the animal through the movements one wants.

This symbol when applied in the chart of a nation will of course manifest in a somewhat different way than it does in an individual horoscope. How does Neptune in Virgo in the 10th House on the degree symbolized by the animal trainer reveal itself? How do our President’s typically act? (The 10th House is the place of the Chief Executive, the President) I think that the image of an animal trainer is a rather apt one. I imagine it could be like getting into a cage filled with all sorts of people who each want something from you. You have noticed that how fast past Presidents have aged while in office.

Neptune, manifesting in a negative way in the USA chart has already been touched on as leading us into unnecessary wars. I believe that it also tends to over-glamorize the office which leads people to the see the president as some sort of superman, that can right all wrongs, and even “make America great again“. But, of course, things never go as well as we expect, so the president is an easy scape-goat for all the bad things. No wonder the men who have served in the office have quickly turned gray. Long range planning and organizational efficiency suffer under the influence of Neptune, consequently America tends to lurch from misadventure to another, furiouslyputting out fires” and spinning its wheels.

USA Chart and Charlottesville Riot Bi-Wheel

What we are looking for here are the significant planet connections, particularly those that form recognizable patterns. It is quite obvious there is one. A T Cross formed by transiting Saturn and Mars aspecting the USA Neptune and Mars.

What does this suggest? I think that after a rather thorough examination of Neptune and Mars in the USA chart and the fact these are being strongly aspected by transiting Saturn, that something significant appears to be approaching. It is notable that Neptune is now at 13 Pisces, and applying in opposition to the USA Neptune, and a squareMars. This may indicate that ‘conditions’ are gathering strength, building toward the Spring of 2021 when the Neptune to Neptune opposition becomes exact.

DJT announces in speech an escalation in Afghanistan War

Last night, August 21, President Trump announced a new policy for the Afghanistan conflict, as we are in 15th year of that misbegotten war. There is a old saying that Afghanistan is the graveyard of nations, that was definitely true for the now defunct USSR. America, is of course, exceptional ( the myth is called “AmericanExceptionalism” ), so we assume that we, the nation, is especially blessed by the Almighty in whatever misguided action we have a knee-jerk impulse to take.

The Charlottesville event chart, while it is timed particularly for that event, and we are using it to try to predict where we are, and where things are going in race relations, the chart also relates to general conditions. Conditions which don’t look good at all, according to the astrology.

An additional dark omen sticks up its ugly head when we note that the Great Eclipse of Monday hit very close to DJTs Mars and Ascendant. This aspect does not bode well for prospects of a return of peace and harmony, in the Nation. Mars is inherently an agitator, an aggressor, but it can also be a defender, protector, when used in a positive way. In trying to predict something we must, and should, look at past records, past behavior, and given our observation of DJT’s past behavior, the future looks anything but peaceful. DJT throughout his life as habitually “led with his Mars”, it is a sure bet that he will continue to do so, after all, it has always worked for him.

Bringing this thing to a close……

It is fascinating to plot the transit around the wheel of Neptune as it triggers significant events in America’s experience of slavery and race relations. I would have liked to have a larger wheel that the Quad Wheel because there are other important charts related to slavery/civil rights could have been displayed, such as the 13th Amendment of 1865, (abolished slavery. )In the Quad Wheel the 3rd & 9th Houses with Virgo and Pisces have been shaded in. You can readily see there is a heavy population of planets in that area, which confirms my thesis that these two sings are significant in matters of race relations.

I think that we can see that the events in Charlottesville do have an astrological connection with important historical events related to slavery and race in this country. Since the election of Mr. Trump our rose-colored glasses have been suddenly ripped from our eyes and what we see now is not a pretty picture of happily ever after. The election of the first black man to the office of President did not signal that America had finally ‘come of age’ and matured into a higher level of humanity. Rather it seems that Mr. Obama’s election was a sort of spark that triggered racial feelings that had laid dormant for a time. I believe that this is a major reason for the unexpected ascendancy of DJT. He had “carried water” for racial bigotry for several years with his promotion of the “Birther Myth“, and it finally paid off for him, to the detriment of the country.

Concluding comments with a larger view

The cycles of Uranus & Pluto are highly significant in understanding historical eras. Richard Tarnas in his amazing book “Cosmos and Psyche” writes that the critical alignment periods ( conjunction, squares and opposition) of these two planets correlates with: “the call for freedom but also the revelation of nature, intellectual awakening but also the eruption of feeling and instinct, radical change but also heightened Eros, creative innovation and experiment but also destructive upheaval”.

We are now in the waning phase of the opening square of the Uranus, Pluto cycle that began with the conjunction at 17 Virgo 07 on October 9, 1965, There was a subsequent conjunction in April 6, 1966 at 16 Virgo 25; these two degrees consequently provide the “seed symbols” for this present cycle that will end with a conjunction in 2104 at 7 Taurus. The next critical alignment, the opposition, will occur in early 2047.

These dates are a long way off but knowing these does help to put current events in a larger context and perhaps help in understanding what ‘it all means’. Our immediate challenge is in dealing with the next 7 -9 year period. This period is highlighted astrologically by a change of signs of each of the three outer planets –Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Pluto will enter Aquarius in January 2024; Neptune will enter Aries in March 2025, and Uranus will enter Gemini in April 2026. Outer planet ingresses invariably correlate with major changes.

Like this:

Published by anthropik9

I was introduced to astrology in 1968 and have studied a a broad spectrum of astrological literature during the intervening years. I was a student of Marc Edmund Jones and a member the the Sabian Assembly and served as mundane astrologer for the Assembly. ejohnson68@tx.rr.com
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